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 | A fact from Eileen Sharp appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 December 2015 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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infobox
editSsilvers (talk · contribs) removed the infobox from the article saying, "Please see Talk page." There's nothing on the talk page explaining why an infobox is inappropriate, so here I am asking. — fourthords | =Λ= | 20:41, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
- The Manual of Style says: "Whether to include an infobox ... is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article." While sports and politician bios can benefit from infoboxes, most articles, as here, do not. Those of us who started this article did not think an infobox would be helpful here. Here are some reasons why: (1) An infobox would emphasize unimportant factoids, and present facts stripped of context and lacking nuance, whereas the WP:LEAD section here emphasizes and contextualizes the most important facts. (2) The most important points about the article are discussed in the Lead, or adequately discussed in the body of the article, so the box is redundant. (3) A box takes up valuable space at the top of the article and hampers the layout and impact of the Lead. (4) Frequent errors creep into infoboxes, as updates are made to the articles but not reflected in the redundant info in the box, and they tend to draw more vandalism and fancruft than other parts of articles. (5) The infobox template creates a lot of code near the top of the edit screen that discourages new editors from editing the article. (6) It discourages readers from reading the article. (7) It distracts editors from focusing on the content of the article. Instead of improving the article, they spend time working on this repetitive feature and its coding and formatting. See also WP:DISINFOBOX. All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:03, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
- I have to agree with Ssilvers here. The important summary of her life is contained in the lead; the extra information in the IB was unnecessary when getting an overall picture of the lady herself. – SchroCat (talk) 21:28, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Eileen Sharp | |
|---|---|
 A postcard of 1922 | |
| Born | Eileen Nora Sharp 20 September 1900 Brighton, UK |
| Died | 25 March 1958 (aged 57) Wimbledon, UK |
| Occupations | |
- (edit conflict) I suggest a simple version of the last infobox in the article here, to discuss the parameters. I don't see how her data of life and death (which are nowhere in the article together) be (1) "unimportant factoids", - I consider it minimal service of a biographic article to supply them at a glance. Even if the infobox had no other content, it would be useful for readers looking for that kind of information. They don't need (1) nuance. This infobox (2) repeats some facts from the body of the article, so does the lead. The infobox (3) takes space that's mostly white, and even if not: see "minimal service". We are human and make errors, but (4) no more frequently in the infobox than elsewhere. I don't see fancruft in this infobox. The (5) code of the infobox is nicely paired in parameters and values, much easier to decipher than long references within the the text. (6) "Discourage from reading" could be said about any image. (7) The coding of infoboxes can be left to users who like to do it, like me ;) - See also Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes: a refutation. - I saw the arguments last on Talk:Jean Sibelius, please see there for more aspects. Happy 150th birthday to a great composer! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:35, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
- An info-box would add nothing of value, and would be pointless clutter here. There is a place for I-Bs - where life stats can be usefully summarised (sportspersons, dignified clergy, politicians et al) but here it would be an amateurish waste of space, as if taking our readers by the hand and explaining as if to a small child what we have already just told them. I think it is patronising and rather insulting to treat our readers thus. Tim riley talk 23:16, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
- As I have said previously, the infobox adds nothing that is not already included in the lead, and we have a policy on the G&S Project not to use them. Jack1956 (talk) 23:23, 7 December 2015 (UTC)